critical angle
by genieforyourworld
Summary: Maybe they can witness the sunset blend the sky from colour into darkness and curse on the stars. — Lucas/Dawn


**disclaimer: i do not own pokemon.  
****fortuneshipping – game!verse.  
****gen four is at its end. i'll miss it.  
****but i wont miss bidoof. or being fined by my rival.**

* * *

**-  
critical angle  
-**

_Hardly an amateur _is what he supposed fit her best. It's obvious to everyone but that loud, rambunctious fool that she didn't want to be out in grass, in the wild, yet he still dragged her along.

She pulls off the defeat almost effortlessly. This girl could go far. Rowan sees it too, and he knows what the elder man is thinking.

Lucas is somewhat grateful though. She is uneasy and her eyes sparkle with panic. He gives her a look of pity and apologises for the Professor's uptight scolding of the blonde blur. She relaxes then, and too says sorry for her friend. That makes him cringe slightly, no way would such a nice, calm and respectful girl could hang out with… _that_. Lucas is still grateful though, because he almost-maybe-possibly could have missed out on meeting her.

He watches her face, gentle and calm, when she reaches out to her new partner — almost green with the attention — and the beginning of a new adventure, a fresh start reminds him of when he first met his precious Turtwig. The two are instant friends and he loves the urge to protect that smile.

...

Dawn is clueless and awkward. He blames the old man for that, for not explaining the basics. When she gives him _that look_, he can't bring himself to refuse the request for aid.

It's just a Starly, but the way she looks at him — pure wonder and amazement — it's as though he has captured the legendary Mew.

She glows with excitement and passion as she thanks him, running off to begin her journey. Lucas hopes that she will not be held back by research, text books and illegible handwritten scrawls. He hopes that she'll get to enjoy every minute freely and just follow the breeze.

...

_I'm pathetic_, is what he thinks as he wallows in defeat.

The moment he caught word of Team Galactic's filthy, disgusting plans his head — or his heart — hopes that she will be safe and sound and kept out of this havoc. When he loses everything (the professor was going to _murder _him when he found out the pokedex was gone) Lucas knows that she'll never stand a chance.

Dawn is tall and proud as she enters Veilstone. He see's that and becomes terrified, gulping hard, his words become lodged in his throat. He doesn't want this girl to break and collapse or lose her smile and dignity.

He wants to cut her off when she tells him she'll help. Words crumble and emerge as incoherent mumbles as she drags him by the hand to confront the space-wannabes. He can't stop her when she becomes so determined and Lucas makes a mental note that this is most certainly not the same girl from Twinleaf Town he met just _weeks _ago.

It is frightful, how much she has changed. Dawn is independent, soaring at a height he cannot reach. She has climbed mountains, he realises, and is unstoppable. Nor he or Barry are holding her back. No longer a calm, paitent little girl, he cannot help but blink twice, thrice – just to reassure himself that this _is _the same human being.

She is not cocky and full of herself, though. Just brave, and valiant, and full of light and brightness.

She does most of the work in battle, he notices. It's not fair. She is unreachable and _so so so _far away it almost breaks his heart.

Lucas wants and aches to be a hero. But he succumbs to fear and reality because she is far more powerful than he can hope to be.

Before she slips from his grasp again, she grins and his chest sags with that familiar feeling from their first meeting.

...

He wants to shout and beg the professor to leave her out of his plan.

For the moment he wants her to keep moving forward, battle the gyms and challenge the league. He doesn't want her to break with the weight of the world on her shoulders.

Lucas knows that Dawn has long since overshadowed him and steamed ahead of her childhood friend.

That's why she is the perfect heroine. Even if he doesn't like the thought.

She should be free and innocent and the light shinning on the surface, not illuminating the entire sky.

Or maybe he is just really _really _selfish.

...

Again, he loses.

He feels pitiful and weak, knowing that Dawn is most likely winning and that Barry is off running his mouth as though the enemy is a just another teenage challenger and not a criminal orgainsation trying to blow the three lakes to smitherines.

He has seen so much over the last few months, weeks, days. But it feels like a year, an entire lifetime has gone by filled with loneliness and regrets.

He stays silent — even when she arrives with empty eyes, a snowstorm battered long coat and another gym badge — and tries to ignore Mars' taunts.

...

She looks lost and bent backwards. Even though she has taken a thousand steps forward, it is like she has taken five hundred back.

As she fumbles with the ends of her scarf, he tries to picture her hiking through Mt. Coronet and enduring the blistering winds and heavy blizzards on the way to Snowpoint, no doubt to help the incapable fool she calls her best friend.

That thought stings his whole body.

...

Lucas knew it would come down to this.

He knew it would be _her _facing Cyrus and his goons while the rest of them sit back and watch. His blood boils and he resists the urge to push her off the cliff — he trusts Staraptor to catch her — so long as she's safe. Because she is beautiful and perfect and does not need to be tainted by war and evil.

Dawn sighs when she knows it is not over. He grasps her by the shoulders and mummbles a faint "you don't have to do this."

_He will go. _She is scared and frightened. If she doesn't want to, he will, even if she is the better candidate.

However, his heart shatters again as she shrugs him off. Diamond eyes look back at him as she promises to come back.

She moves through space and time to a place more distant than ever.

...

She is back in Sandgem.

Lucas knows who — what — she has become. He is proud and happy for her, yet a sense of melancholy still bleeds through his heart.

Dawn steps through the old oak door of lab and gives him a small wave as he sits on the porch absorbing the sunlight.

He will wait for her (it might take awhile considering Rowan is showing off to the old man or friend or whoever-he-is from Kanto. In fact he can hear him now, "Forget Mt. Silver, Coronet is—").

They will go to the beach. And maybe they can see the sunset blend the sky from colour into darkness and curse on the stars. They will talk like old friends and he will ask all the questions his heart is exploding to know answers to. He will tell her everything.

For the time being, he will not be the Professor's back-breaking assistant and they will forget that she is the most powerful person in Sinnoh.

He hopes, that when she stares into the mirror, the reflection is totally the same as when she looked into it before she became a trainer, never mind champion.

* * *

**extra: **and they all lived happily ever after. until she went to the battle frontier.  
all in all, this was just a little something to say goodbye. out with old and in with the new.

_Review._


End file.
